Web Conferencing Tips, News, and Opinions

May 30, 2009

Tip For Connect Pro Font Problems

Windows Vista comes with fonts that weren’t included in Windows XP. PowerPoint may pick up these fonts and use them as defaults for text slides. The most common ones I’ve seen on slides are Corbel and Calibri.

When you upload a PowerPoint file into Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, slides are converted for display in the web conferencing environment. Unfortunately the Connect Pro converter doesn’t recognize and properly convert Corbel or Calibri. It turns them into something that looks to my eye like Arial. The shape of the letters is very close to your original text in the PowerPoint file, but the size is different. Your text tends to wrap or overlap in places that you don’t expect.

Here is my suggestion for making your uploaded slides look as close as possible to the appearance in PowerPoint.

1) If you are starting a new PowerPoint file, make sure to change your default text font on your master to a font that Adobe can convert. If you like the sans serif look of Corbel or Calibri, try one of these instead: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, TW Cen MT, or Gill Sans MT.

2) If you have an existing PowerPoint with those problematic fonts and you want to minimize the amount of rework you have to do to your slide deck, replace the fonts as follows:

Open the presentation in PowerPoint

Find an option in the toolbar under Format to Replace Fonts (in PowerPoint 2007, this is on the Home ribbon at the end in the Editing box. Use the dropdown arrow next to “Replace”)

Replace Corbel with TW Cen MT

Replace Calibri with Gil Sans MT

Save the file (you may want to save to a new name for comparison purposes)

Upload the new file to Connect Pro

I chose the above replacement fonts because they are the closest I could find in shape and size to the original fonts. The new text should fit in the same space as your original text, without requiring additional reformatting.

Always do a comparison check when your web conferencing product uploads and converts slides. Never trust that uploaded slides will look the way they do in PowerPoint.

UPDATE AUGUST 6, 2014:

This is an awfully old post, but I had the opportunity to check in with Rocky Mitarai, the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Connect. He confirmed that Corbel and Calibri are now properly licensed and supported within Connect. So I'm happy to say you can disregard this old problem!

Comments

Tip For Connect Pro Font Problems

Windows Vista comes with fonts that weren’t included in Windows XP. PowerPoint may pick up these fonts and use them as defaults for text slides. The most common ones I’ve seen on slides are Corbel and Calibri.

When you upload a PowerPoint file into Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, slides are converted for display in the web conferencing environment. Unfortunately the Connect Pro converter doesn’t recognize and properly convert Corbel or Calibri. It turns them into something that looks to my eye like Arial. The shape of the letters is very close to your original text in the PowerPoint file, but the size is different. Your text tends to wrap or overlap in places that you don’t expect.

Here is my suggestion for making your uploaded slides look as close as possible to the appearance in PowerPoint.

1) If you are starting a new PowerPoint file, make sure to change your default text font on your master to a font that Adobe can convert. If you like the sans serif look of Corbel or Calibri, try one of these instead: Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, TW Cen MT, or Gill Sans MT.

2) If you have an existing PowerPoint with those problematic fonts and you want to minimize the amount of rework you have to do to your slide deck, replace the fonts as follows:

Open the presentation in PowerPoint

Find an option in the toolbar under Format to Replace Fonts (in PowerPoint 2007, this is on the Home ribbon at the end in the Editing box. Use the dropdown arrow next to “Replace”)

Replace Corbel with TW Cen MT

Replace Calibri with Gil Sans MT

Save the file (you may want to save to a new name for comparison purposes)

Upload the new file to Connect Pro

I chose the above replacement fonts because they are the closest I could find in shape and size to the original fonts. The new text should fit in the same space as your original text, without requiring additional reformatting.

Always do a comparison check when your web conferencing product uploads and converts slides. Never trust that uploaded slides will look the way they do in PowerPoint.

UPDATE AUGUST 6, 2014:

This is an awfully old post, but I had the opportunity to check in with Rocky Mitarai, the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Connect. He confirmed that Corbel and Calibri are now properly licensed and supported within Connect. So I'm happy to say you can disregard this old problem!